Brands and businesses are now using interactive packaging to scale sales and move product demand a notch higher. They understand that first impression matters and that the first impression a product makes on customers determines the success or failure of that product.
A product’s packaging is a consumer’s first contact with a brand. It is not just enough to offer pleasant and regular packaging.
Interactive packaging is used both as a sales and marketing strategy. It draws and holds the consumer’s attention like traditional packaging does not.
Today more than ever, creative and interactive packaging contributes significantly to product experience and the product sales rate.
People tend to easily remember your product when it leaves a mark on their emotions as a result of physically interacting with them.
Interactive packaging is fun, memorable, innovative, and a practical means of promoting customer loyalty while maintaining a dynamic relationship between a brand and a customer base. This article shows you what you need to know about interactive packaging, types of interactive packaging, and some examples of interactive packaging.
What You Need to Know About Interactive Packaging
Interactive packaging is a type of packaging that involves a creative and deeper consumer-product engagement.
It engages and excites users’ curiosity by its ability to entertain and draw customers to interact actively with the packaging.
Interactive packaging enables a consumer to establish a more meaningful, long-lasting relationship with a brand by ensuring increased involvement with a product.
The focus of interactive packaging is to make encounters with your product memorable.
When we discuss interactive packaging, we primarily refer to two categories of products: those that demand user participation on a physical or mental level or those that offer interactive information about the product being sold (e.g., smart labels).
Interactive packaging may involve a QR code scanner that can give the consumer access to more product details and invite them into the brand’s narrative. Others may be an augmented reality experience that is entertaining and original, such as when wine bottles feature easy maze games on the label or a beer carton unfolds to reveal a board game. Still, another may involve using the package, such as when a sandwich package can be unfolded and used as a plate during meal time.
Types of Interactive Packaging
Augmented Reality
Augmented reality, also called AR, is a type of interactive packaging that allows for an engaging semi-virtual experience within the context of the real world through 2D or 3D digital materials.
Augmented reality in packaging makes products easily accessible by providing more information about the product. This technology combines image recognition with visual content that can be accessed, just like the QR code, by scanning the product with an app. It may also come with games that engage users with superheroes who combat other people. These interactive elements are hidden within the design components of the packaging.
Customers are to use their smartphones to unlock the graphics on the packaging to reveal the hidden experience. An example is the Justice League characters by DC Comics found on several Pepsi cans.
QR Codes
QR codes are Quick Response codes that are usually scannable barcodes that direct customers to a web page or an app that provides additional information on the product use or details of the product content.
This smart packaging technology adds a scannable code to a product’s label, which a customer’s smartphone’s camera app or designated QR code reader may read.
This may direct customers to a web page to get brand and product information and access a promo or an exclusive offer.
Inclusive Packaging
Inclusive packaging is a type of interactive packaging designed for people with impairments. The goal of inclusive packaging is to create product-customer interaction among disabled people. For example, a product designed for blind people utilizes braille labels. They can read and collect the necessary information by touching the braille labels.
The embossed printing allows even those who are not blind to recognize and distinguish the product.
Reusable Packaging
Reusable packaging refers to all packaging designed for second use. It is interactive packaging because it involves the customer’s intervention. Reusable packages do not only contain and present the product but they can be transformed and used for something different.
In a market where consumers increasingly seek novel and creative product packaging, reusable packaging provides the customer with a personalized experience that might serve as an additional incentive.
Additionally, reusable packaging is a fantastic environmentally friendly choice because once the package is opened, you are less likely to dispose of it.
Multi-sensory Packaging
Multi-sensory packaging is a type of interactive packaging that provides customers with various sensory experiences through touch, hearing, or smell, especially while shopping. It allows customers’ participation by ensuring they buy products that fit their needs. Examples are packages that make sounds or products whose labels smell like the contents.
Storytelling Packaging
Storytelling packaging may highlight the history and uniqueness of the product. This type of interactive packaging engages customers by using the element of storytelling. It actively involves the customer by making him the lead character, hereby establishing a relationship between the customer and the story.
Both visual and vocal storytelling techniques can be used in this form of interactive packaging. Some ideas can be efficiently communicated by pictures, shapes, and colors, while others must always be explained in words.
Examples of Interactive Packaging
Origami Label on a Beer Bottle
Origami beer bottles are ornamented with foldable and decorative origami labels. People frequently fall into the habit of scraping off the labels of their beer bottles. The origami labels reduce this habit by engaging consumers with producing something useful and elegant. It can be folded into a flower if you follow the instructions on the label.
Lunch Package That Folds Into a Plate
Interactive food packaging is essential for increasing product elegance and customer satisfaction. ASDA’s sandwich packaging is a perfect example of how interactive components can be used strategically and purposefully. The lunch package is designed to fold into a ready-to-use plate where you can place your meal. Opening the box, you unfold the package into a plate to serve your food.
Squeezable Wine Box
You can have fun and enjoy the ride of pouring out your wine with a Zube squeezable wine box. Zube squeezable wine box comes with the squeeze function that lets you squeeze wine until the last drop.
Beer Packaging With Game Board
Drinking and gaming go well together. Corona board game beer packaging brings both together excitingly and engagingly. You need to flatten the box to open the board game and use your bottle caps as the game pieces.
Puzzle Labels on Wine Bottles
Puzzles are brain teasers, engaging and challenging, and people love them. It is a smart move to include puzzle games on a wine package because they combine sophistication, fun, and intelligence.
Chalkboard Coffee and Tea Packaging
Delilah DIY Hamper chalkboard coffee and tea packaging is interactive packaging that fosters artistry and good times. It lets consumers use the coffee package for doodling. The type of paper used in creating the packages allows them to be used as miniature chalkboards, and the set’s inclusion of chalk sticks encourages this usage.
Benefits of Interactive Packaging
Interactive Packaging Distinguishes Your Brand
The market is full of companies competing for customers’ attention. You can stand your product out and uniquely tell your brand story by integrating smart and interactive elements into your packaging.
Relying on simple designs, colors, and traditional aesthetics may not do well in maintaining customer loyalty since your product can be easily interchanged with other similar products. People buy things interchangeably when they appear interchangeable, yet establishing distinctive packaging fosters deeper relationships with customers.
Interactive packaging lets you tell your brand’s story and demonstrate your values digitally by tying your physical packaging to your digital information. Smart and interactive packaging distinguishes your product and makes it a steady force in consumers’ lives.
Interactive Packaging Provides Valuable Information About the Product
Interactive packaging adds value by offering access to added information about a product. This is especially useful because consumers want new insights and in-depth information about their products. Interactive packaging can let you in on exclusive promotions, tell you the freshness status of your food product and confirm the authenticity of the product. It can also show you the expiry date of products and give recipes and information on how to recycle a product.
Consumers who have important information about your product feel secure and are most likely to make it a household item.
For example, a meat-producing company can develop labels that change color over time to alert buyers when items are quickly losing their freshness. For instance, a yellow dot denotes that a product is fresh, a blue dot indicates that it should be used soon, and a grey dot denotes that the product has passed its expiration date.
Other examples include a detailed step-by-step on how to use a product, recycle the packaging, or safety notes.
Consider what information would be most helpful to your consumers when choosing what to add.
Interactive Packaging Enhances Customer-Product Engagement
Interactive packaging creates valuable and exciting engagement between the customer and the product. There is a higher likelihood that a consumer will buy your product after responding to the call to engagement made by its interactivity. This memorable engagement helps customers to develop a strong relationship with your brand.
Some interactive packaging and labels can be turned into crafts, and others come with illustrations of games that engage consumers. An example is a paper box package for t-shirts that folds into a hanger for later use. Another example is a square paper label on your goods that can be folded later to form an origami flower or animal.
You may draw in customers and strengthen brand loyalty through interactive packaging by rewarding them with memorable experiences.
Interactive Packaging is Cost Effective
The evolution of printing and 3-D printing has made packaging less expensive. You don’t need an outrageous budget to use interactive packaging for your products.
And you don’t necessarily need to develop your app to scale your product. Using the universal QR code apps such as the QR Code Reader app available for Android and iOS can save you tens of thousands of dollars in developing an app.
You can include various interactive packaging options in your product label without breaking the bank.
Bottom Line
Interactive packaging is not new; manufacturers and marketers have long used it to attract customers and increase sales.
Interactive packaging comes in various ways today, and a unique and enjoyable design doesn’t have to be expensive. Top companies are leveraging the power of interactive packaging to increase consumer engagement and brand loyalty. From coffee mugs designed to reflect different countenance by twisting the button to labels that can fold into origami shapes to smart Label tags that can provide consumers with more information about the product’s features.
Rapidly evolving technology has increased the possibilities of interactive packaging. Interactive packaging gives the consumer control over the information they learn about your brand and product, fostering a dynamic relationship between consumers and your product.
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